Here's The Deal With All The Little Pink Backpacks Baseball Players Are Wearing

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In a new hazing ritual, rookie relief pitchers are forced to
carry gear and snacks for the rest of the bullpen in colorful
backpacks meant for little girls. It's hard not to snicker at the
image of a top athlete carrying a little cartoon pack, but the
tradition also says something about gender politics and the
culture of the game.

The Times
reports on the ritual, which has apparently sprung up in the
last few years and spread throughout the major leagues. Says Mets
pitcher Tim Byrdak,

It's just one more way to get at your rookie. You have to walk
all the way across the field to get to the bullpen, so you make
the rookie carry this pink bag, and you can kind of humiliate
him.

Some pitchers apparently carry Star Wars or Cookie Monster backpacks, but pink appears to
dominate. The most junior reliever for the Phillies has to wear
not just a Hello Kitty pack but also a pink feather boa. Of
course, part of the joke is that no grown man wants to look like
a little kid, but there's also some sexism here — on the baseball
field, the most embarrassing thing you can be is girly. This fits
in with stereotypes about "throwing like a girl" and "playing
like a bunch of little girls." And pink has a long history of
hazing use — when I was in junior high in mid-nineties, kids who
forgot their gym clothes had to wear sets dyed bright fuchsia.

On the plus side, the backpack tradition doesn't seem to be
mean-spirited, and rookie pitchers take it in stride: says Mets
pitcher Pedro Beato of his Dora the Explorer pack, "The first day
I showed up, and it was just in my locker, I knew what I had to
do. It's my duty." And while the practice implicitly denigrate
girls, it also celebrates childhood, or at least immaturity.
After all, hazing itself is often the province of young people at
school or camp, and this is a pretty benign version of it. It may
be that playing a game for a living encourages childlike behavior
— in which case, maybe all baseball players are a little bit like
the kids who carry around cartoon backpacks. And maybe, for all
its gender politics problems, a Hello Kitty pack is an
acknowledgment that its wearer is out there having fun.